Skip to main content

Saving Almost $800 a Year on Snacks

It may not be fashionable in the low-carb world, but I like to snack. I feel better when I snack. I don't feel good when I eat big meals and don't know how people put away three-egg bacon-cheese omelets with a bullet-proof coffee. The good thing about low-carb snacking is that by definition, you avoid eating junk like potato chips and fruit pies. The bad news is that low-carb snacks from the convenience store are expensive.

Time was when the only two kinds of coffee I drank were free and home-brewed. When I realized cream gave me problems, I started taking it black and then realized that the office coffee was terrible. But the little shop on the first floor made a wonderful cup for $2.11. An equally wonderful home-brewed cup is about 12 cents. Sleeping in an extra ten minutes, the time it takes to brew a 12-cent cup of coffee, is costing me almost $500 a year. I've set my alarm earlier.

The convenience store sells Kind bars for around $2.50 and large diet Dr. Pepper for $1.84; for me, that's 92 cents for one serving of soda. The grocery store sells diet cola and root beer $2.99 a six-pack, or 50 cents a serving. From now on, I'm bringing my own soda to work (and supporting a company I own stock in). That's $100 a year in savings. Yes, I could just drink water, but realistically, I want a soda when I'm stressed out at work, which is often.

I had a feeling I could make snacks similar to a Kind bar for less money. I made maple paleonola from 500 Paleo Recipes today, weighing the ingredients, and figured out it costs 90 cents a serving. Bonus: each serving has almost 400 calories (including 35 grams of fat) compared to 200 calories in a Kind nut delight bar. Ninety cents is cheaper than what 400 calories worth of free-range eggs costs me; all those nuts only seem expensive. Savings: about $192 per year.

Total savings from making, brewing and bringing my own: $792 a year.

Comments

tess said…
no kidding! we use premium ingredients, but in the end we get a better quality product with REAL nutritional value.... when you think of what that "doritos and a coke" or "starbucks and muffin" snack costs in money AND health, you wonder how you could have been so stupid for so long.

if you function best on smaller, more frequent meals ... that's what you should do!
Lori Miller said…
Suze Orman has always gone on about spending money on coffee, and I agree with her. If you're getting a fancy coffee every day (read: liquid sugar), you're really doing yourself a disservice.
Galina L. said…
At least you have the thing to drop from your diet (like snacking) if you need to .
No, I can't eat 3 eggs+bacon+bulletproof coffee in one setting myself, such coffee is a meal.
No-snacking took me from a weight-loss plateau for a while.
Lori Miller said…
The odd thing is, I'm not even hungry for lunch today, let alone a snack.
Guess we all have to plan our life/meals/exercise, sleep patterns etc that suit our life. For me the start of the day is so important. I find if I have a cooked breakfast for example eggs, bacon, mushrooms it keeps me going through to lunch etc. I am not a 'snacky' person, but whole-heartily agree if you can take time to make your own it is better than shop bought.

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
The maple paleonola is pretty tasty. And it's nice to not be rushed getting ready for work in the morning, since I get up a little earlier.

Popular posts from this blog

What $115 Buys--Junk Food vs. Real Food

A lady recently went off about how little food $115 buys, complaining that the pile of (mostly) junk food she bought wouldn't make a week's worth of lunches and snacks for her children. Sad to say, but this looks like what I see in a lot of grocery carts.  Fat pic.twitter.com/qbM23ydaOq — shellshock (@shellshockkk) March 7, 2025 Coincidentally, I paid almost exactly the same amount today on groceries that would make lots of healthy lunches. It's filling food that won't leave you hungry every few hours for snacks. If we want to make America healthy again, this is the way.  

Celebrities Shilling for Big Soda

There's a push in Washington and ten states to ban soda (and other junk food) from SNAP, a program for low-income people to buy groceries. This seems like a no-brainer: the N in SNAP stands for nutrition, and soda doesn't have nutrients. It's liquid sugar, the last thing we need in a country full of diabetics. People can drink water for virtually nothing and save their SNAP money for actual food. Yet a number of posts from otherwise sensible accounts have opposed this.  Reporter Nick Sorter says that a company called Influenceable has been paying influencers to post these opinions. (Click on the link for the full thread.) 🚨🧵 EXPOSED: “INFLUENCEABLE” — The company cutting Big Checks to “influencers” on behalf of Big Soda Over the past 48 hours, several large supposedly MAGA-aligned “influencers” posted almost identical talking points fed to them, convincing you MAHA was out of line for not… pic.twitter.com/PpPwH9lHGe — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) March 22, 2025 Sorter adds...

$17/pound chips! Real food is cheaper

 My latest video on YouTube: Real food is generally cheaper than junk food--the pictures prove it. I took these at Kroger and from their website in March 2025. Prices are either straight from the tags or calculated based on product weight.  Music: On We Go (ClipChamp)  First photo by AS Photography: https://www.pexels.com/photo/vegetables-stall-868110/

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...